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Ox-tail Soup

A soup made with ox tail, water, onions, bread crust, herbs, cloves, salt, pepper, and optional tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Ox-tail Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Thoroughly clean the ox tail and cut it into short pieces.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pot, boil the ox tail gently in water for several hours.

  2. Towards the end of cooking, add the onions, crust of bread, sweet herbs, cloves, salt, and pepper.

  3. If desired, add sliced tomatoes for acidity.

Cool and serve

  1. Let the soup cool to remove excess fat before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ox tail
Gives the soup its meaty flavour and body as it simmers slowly in water.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook down.
Crust of bread
Helps thicken the broth slightly as it softens during cooking.
Tomatoes
Add acidity that brightens the rich, fatty broth.

The step that matters

Cool the soup before serving. Fat from the ox tail rises to the surface as the soup cools and solidifies, so it can be lifted off. Serving it hot leaves the fat dispersed in the broth, making it greasier.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, bread, clove, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, bread, clove, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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